Reflections on nature, culture & the inner life
Dear TNS Friends: These are the days of harvest blessings in many traditions. A good harvest was often a matter of life or death—of starvation or of plenty for the days and nights of dark and cold in the Northern Hemisphere. It is also a good time to turn inward...
Dear New School Friends: Awareness of the global polycrisis is spreading everywhere now. Most often people tie the polycrisis to climate change. Fewer realize that the real challenge is the unpredictable interaction of all the global stressors—environmental, social,...
Dear New School Friends: The great writer and naturalist Barry Lopez participated in a Commonweal retreat a few years before he died. That is where I came to know him. On May 31, Ben Ehrenreich, himself a great writer and naturalist, published this New York Times...
Dear Friends: We live in an intensely dangerous period of time–for ourselves and for the world. The turbulence continues to accelerate. This is the polycrisis–the quickening interaction of environmental, social, technological and economic stressors–leading to...
Dear Friends: This morning at 8 a.m., four of us from Commonweal went down to Agate Beach in Bolinas. We went to visit an extraordinary whale rib that had washed up with the tide. I estimate the rib is about twelve feet long and as thick as my thigh. Since it is only...
Dear Friends: This essay, or working paper, is my latest effort to explore how we may live as best we can in the global polycrisis that we have entered. I use the terms global polycrisis and polycrisis throughout this working paper. But I hold no special brief for...
Dear New School Friends: No doubt you have noticed the world is in disarray. No doubt COVID has affected your life. No doubt the signs of war and climate change and political strife weigh upon you. Tonight, as I reflected on what i might say to you, an inner voice...
Dear TNS Friends: Thanks to so many of you for supporting The New School this giving season. We are so grateful. If you didn't get around to making a contribution, no worries! Just make your contribution here. Start the new year supporting our unique approach to...
Dear Commonweal Friends: I hope this letter finds you well. You will soon see the Commonweal Year End Report. This is my personal letter to you. I’ve organized the letter around seven topics: What Oren Slozberg has brought to Commonweal. The 212th Cancer Help Program...
Dear New School Friends, How do we live in this time? It is a question I ask myself again and again. For many, there is little choice. It is a time of such anguish for uncounted millions around the world. But what of those of us who have a sufficiency? Food, a roof...